{"id":318861,"date":"2024-09-18T12:50:57","date_gmt":"2024-09-18T17:50:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=318861"},"modified":"2024-09-18T01:29:06","modified_gmt":"2024-09-18T06:29:06","slug":"moms-brain-sculpted-pregnancy-beauty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/moms-brain-sculpted-pregnancy-beauty\/","title":{"rendered":"Researchers: Mom’s brain is ‘sculpted’ during pregnancy, revealing ‘underlying beauty’"},"content":{"rendered":"
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An amazing <\/span>new study<\/span><\/a> from the journal Nature shows the profound effects of pregnancy on a woman\u2019s brain \u2013 some of which last years after birth \u2013 are even more extensive than previously thought.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In the study, neuroscientist, co-author of the study, and first-time mom Liz Chrastil scanned her brain 26 times \u2013 before, during, and after her pregnancy with her son. What the authors found when mapping and analyzing the data was a detailed picture of the changes of the brain, inside and out, throughout pregnancy and into the postpartum period.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

“It’s the first detailed map of the human brain across gestation,” said senior author Emily Jacobs from the University of California, Santa Barbara, <\/span>according to the BBC<\/span><\/a>. “We’ve never witnessed the brain in a process of metamorphosis like this. We are finally able to observe changes to the brain in real time.”<\/span><\/p>\n

But what are these changes for? Chrastil distilled a portion of the study in a <\/span>tweet<\/span><\/a>: \u201cBrain changes during pregnancy are likely an evolutionarily-tuned suite of adaptations to help maternal behavior and bonding. We hope to find out more about mechanisms and what it means for things like postpartum depression in the coming years.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere is so much about the neurobiology of pregnancy that we don\u2019t understand yet, and it\u2019s not because women are too complicated. It\u2019s not because pregnancy is some Gordian knot,\u201d Jacobs said <\/span>according to the AP<\/span><\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s a byproduct of the fact that biomedical sciences have historically ignored women\u2019s health.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n